1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an animation creating method and system for creating an executive scenario of animation while reducing a load to be imposed on animation reproduction, and to an animation reproducing method and system for reproducing the executive scenario of animation created by the animation creating method and system.
2. Description of the Related Art
An animation creating method and system create a scenario of animation, and an animation reproducing method and system reproduce an animation by displaying frame data items (image data items) successively on a display unit according to the created scenario of animation.
The scenario of animation is described in the form of paired data including identifiers of frame data items and reproduction tempos of the frame data items or tempos at which the frame data items should be reproduced.
An animation creating method and system according to a related art is such that a scenario of animation described in the form of paired data including identifiers of frame data items and reproduction tempos of the frame data items is created according to the definition of a scenario of animation.
In line with the animation creating method and system according to the related art, an animation reproducing method and system according to the related art is such that: paired data including an identifier of a frame data item and a reproduction tempo of the frame data item is retrieved from the created scenario of animation; a frame data item indicated by the identifier is read from a memory and displayed on a display unit; the passage of a time interval defined by the reproduction tempo is monitored; when the passage of the time interval is detected, the next paired data is retrieved; and this sequence is repeated in order to reproduce an animation.
However, according to the related art, there is a problem that when a plurality of animations are reproduced concurrently, the load imposed by the reproduction is very large.
In other words, when a plurality of animations are reproduced concurrently according to a plurality of scenarios, since the reproduction tempos described in the scenarios are mutually different, the passage of a time interval relative to which the reproduction tempos are determined and which is different from scenario to scenario must be monitored for each scenario. This poses a problem that the load imposed by the reproduction gets larger.